This is part of the big prayer Jesus prayed in John 17 before he was betrayed, arrested, and eventually crucified. As someone who has grown up in Christendom and who has been at church and stuff my whole life, I guess I would have expected Jesus to pray for something else.

I guess I believe that one of the most important things for Christians to do is reach out to those who don’t know Jesus. After all, God loves us and wants to be with us, but we’re separated from Him by our sin and condemned to eternity apart from Him if we do not know Christ as Savior. This is completely true, I believe. I think I would expect Jesus to pray, “Help my followers to be really faithful witnesses, dynamic communicators, and passionate about the Lost.”

Instead, he asks the Father to make us Christians unified as he is unified with God. (That’s intense unity, by the way.) I put one verse as the verse of the day, but throughout this prayer, Jesus continually asks God in various ways to help us to be unified. It really appears to be the primary thing that was on His heart at the time.

So, briefly, what does that mean to us? I guess, a lot of things. To me, though, I was pretty convicted about one thing when I read this. I like to be funny. A lot of times, being funny, for me, involves a level of sarcasm. While I don’t want to say all sarcasm is wrong (it may be, but I don’t want to say it :)), I really wonder how it affects the unity that our Lord Jesus Christ is so passionate about.

I live with someone with whom most of my conversation is pretty insincere. We joke around a lot and most of the time it is sarcastic. While I like the guy, I don’t really feel super close to him and I don’t feel super unified with him because we rarely have real, heart-felt, genuine conversation. Thinking about how that relationship has been affected by my lack of seriousness and especially by my consistent sarcasm, has really got me wanting to change.

I think in summing Ephesians 4:3 puts it well: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” What does every effort mean? Well, no holds barred.